The application of tissue-engineered fish swim bladder vascular graft

Hualong Bai,Peng Sun,Wang Wang,Yachen Hou,Jing’An Li,Zhuo Li,Haoliang Wu,Boao Xie,Shunbo Wei,Alan Dardik

doi:10.1038/s42003-021-02696-9

Hualong Bai, Peng Sun + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02696-9

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Abstract

Small diameter (< 6 mm) prosthetic vascular grafts continue to show very low long-term patency, but bioengineered vascular grafts show promising results in preclinical experiments. To assess a new scaffold source, we tested the use of decellularized fish swim bladder as a vascular patch and tube in rats. Fresh goldfish (Carassius auratus) swim bladder was decellularized, coated with rapamycin and then formed into patches or tubes for implantation in vivo. The rapamycin-coated patches showed decreased neointimal thickness in both the aorta and inferior vena cava patch angioplasty models. Rapamycin-coated decellularized swim bladder tubes implanted into the aorta showed decreased neointimal thickness compared to uncoated tubes, as well as fewer macrophages. These data show that the fish swim bladder can be used as a scaffold source for tissue-engineering vascular patches or vessels.

Highlights

Small diameter (< 6 mm) prosthetic vascular grafts continue to show very low long-term patency, but bioengineered vascular grafts show promising results in preclinical experiments
Here, we show that decellularized fish swim bladder can be used as a vascular patch or as an interposition tube graft in both the rat inferior vena cava (IVC) and the aorta, and successfully model the patch angioplasty and tube interposition grafts that are surgical procedures commonly used in vascular surgery[7,29]
These decellularized fish swim bladder-based scaffolds can be coated with rapamycin to inhibit both arterial and venous neointimal hyperplasia

Summary

Introduction

Small diameter (< 6 mm) prosthetic vascular grafts continue to show very low long-term patency, but bioengineered vascular grafts show promising results in preclinical experiments. To assess a new scaffold source, we tested the use of decellularized fish swim bladder as a vascular patch and tube in rats. Rapamycin-coated decellularized swim bladder tubes implanted into the aorta showed decreased neointimal thickness compared to uncoated tubes, as well as fewer macrophages. These data show that the fish swim bladder can be used as a scaffold source for tissue-engineering vascular patches or vessels. We hypothesized that decellularized fish swim bladder can serve as a biological vascular graft scaffold and can be surface modified; we created swim bladder-derived scaffolds, coated them with rapamycin, shaped them into patches or tubes, and implanted them into rats to determine biocompatibility

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Results

Conclusion